Blog Archives

Budget Single Story Bird House Logie Seman (Ex-Assistant Forest Officer, Forest Department Sarawak) Introduction A study was conducted of bird houses that are used to lure the swiftlet ‘burung walet’. The purpose of the study was to design a practical and innovative bird house that would provide better opportunities for rural or middle class people to participate in swiftlet farming and the sale of white edible bird’s nests, which is considered a lucrative industry. In Sarawak, wealthy people or companies initiated the construction of large bird houses, three to four stories high, which might cost between RM 300,000 to RM 400,000. An alternative is to build a single story bird […]

The Key to the Bird Nest Business Lies in Bird House Haruka Suzuki（Center for On-site Education and Research, Integrated Area Studies Unit, Center for the Promotion of Interdisciplinary Education and Research, Kyoto University） The key to the bird nest business lies in houses The bird nest business is flourishing in urban areas along the Sarawak coast. Success in this business, which involves gathering the nests of cave swiftlets, a type of swiftlet, for sale (see Photograph 1), depends on being able to gather as many large nests as possible. To that end, people build structures that provide an environment that facilitates nest-building by the birds. Throughout this paper, I will […]

The Edible Birds’ Nest Commodity Chain between Sarawak and East Asia Daniel Chew (University of Malaysia Sarawak) Edible birds’ nest, which are moulded from the saliva of the aerodramus swiflets, forming white and black nests, are a highly prized culinary food product reputed to have health benefits. The uniqueness of the appeal of the nests is its association with the dynastic past of China as a special food for rulers and the wealthy, an appeal which carries on to this day as an expensive and prestigious food product for the ethnic Chinese wherever they live. The nests are collected from cliffs in caves and man made structures in maritime and […]